The Second Generation

gh the fashionable suburb. It arrived at Point Helen, the seat of the Whitneys, within an hour after Torrey left Ranger. It had accumulated confirmatory detail by

hich were doubly to unite the houses and fortunes of Ranger and Whitney-the marriages of Arthur and Janet, of Ross and Adelaide. "And, of course," said Mrs. Whitney, "we all want the y

said

Ellen and Charles and I have lived for our children, have toiled to raise them above the

ak, though she ga

t Charles and I have had in mind some months. Ross and Janet will soon be here, and I

ed?" sai

to know that Arthur and Adelaide won't be at the mercy of any reverse in business Charles might have-or of any capric

features from their repose into an expressiveness that made

matter of his will," she went on. "He often says, 'I don't want my children to be impatient f

ram said: "That's one

smiled her softest and sweetest. But Hiram saw only the glitter in her c

he went on, his excitement showing only in his lapses into dialect, "we hain't worked all our lives so that our childre

leman and their daughter a lady. She found in Hiram's energetic bitterness nothing to cause her to change her view. "He simply wants to hold on to his property to the last, and play the tyrant," she said to herself. "A

, let 'em marry as you and Charles, as Ellen and I married. I ain't b

wall behind him. When the new upstairs girl came

e, flushed with the exercise of t

t marry without settlements, as it's called. And I've been te

elegantly. "I've simply been trying to persuade him to do as much toward securing the future of you

aid, "gettin' together a lot of newfangled notions. Ellen and I and our c

heart. "Speak up!" he said. "Do you

was Adelaide's evasive answer, he

r?" said Hir

cuse me, sir," rep

forward and, looking at his daughter, said: "Del, would you marr

eting his gaze now. "But, at the same time,

our mother is d

t," said Adelaid

asked

that there was something profoundly unsatisfactory in the relations between Ross and herself; that what he was giving her was different not only

ed Hiram in the same s

support her in the manner to which she is accustomed," said

married for a living, for luxury. I suppose you'

th his illogical father whose antiquated sentimentalism was as unfitt

Whitney, good-humoredly, "

t of dignity and power. "I don't stand for the notion that marriage is living in luxury and lo

her all but departed hope of changing him, she said: "It is a great shock to me to have you eve

uch marriages. The girl that wants my son only if he has money to enable her to make a fool of herself, ain't fit to be a wife-and a

, I'd not have brought this matter up at this time. I see my instincts didn't mislead me. But I don't give up hope. I've known you too many years, Hiram Ranger, not to know that your

ully, when they were out of his father's hearing. "I don't know what has come over him of late. He has gone back to his childhood and under the spell of the ideas

nd toilsome beginnings of Charles and herself. She believed-not without reason-that, under Ross's glossy veneer of gentleman, there was a shrewd and calculating nature; it, she thought, would not permit the gentleman to make mess of those matters, which, coarse and sordid though they were, still must be looked after sharply if the gentleman was to be kept going. But she was, not unnaturally, completely taken in by Ar

handle, a string of diamonds worth a small fortune round her neck, a gold bag, studded with diamonds, in her lap, and her superb figure clad in a close-fitting white cloth dress. In the gates she swept pa

*

ht, by word or expression or motion, than if he had been a seated statue. The reading came to an end, but neither man spoke. The choir of birds, ass

re him, laid the will upo

while Hiram's eyes slowly read each word of the will. He dipped the pen and, with a hand that trembled in spite of all his

m. "You had better tak

ey, tears in his eyes,

ll. His conscience told him he had "put his house in order"; but he felt as if he had set fire to it with his family

*

king hearts the disappearance of her glittering chariot and her glistening steeds. Then they had gone into the g

ut Doctor Hargrave?" asked Arthur, af

now," said

r to go at father,

made no

ably. "What are you thinki

e Mrs. Whitn

he real thing," said Arthur. "You can't

ly mounted. "You don'

deal of truth that we don't like. Why do you alw

get half-angry with you, I get wholly angry with myself for being contemptible

d mirthlessly

re both partly right and partly wrong-that's usually the way it

d be done with it?" cried Arthur impatiently. "Wh

thought him dead. "He's asleep," she murmured, the tears standing in her eyes and raining in her heart. Her mother she could judge impartially; her mother's disregard of the changes which had come to assume so much importance in her own and Arthur's lives

o agonized, that she leaned, faint, against th

ied to go to him, but at the very thought she was overwhelmed by such fear as she had not had since she, a child, lay in her little bed in the dark, too terr

urrying down

er!" cried

o lift him. Ellen dropped the lifeless arm, turned to her daughter. And Adelaide saw into her mother's inmost heart, saw the tragic lif

hen, as Adelaide sped, she said tenderly to h

ch he still believed to be right, that which he now thought he would give his soul's salvation for the chance to undo. For, as the paralysis began to lock his body

. "Somewhat sooner than

ll it last?"

hat the paralysis would not relax its grip until it had borne him into the e